JAMES TOUR PROGRAMME BIOGRAPHY 12.99

"When we were struggling for years, gigs were the only barometer of how we could judge what we were doing. We'd play and the crowds would go barmy and each time there'd be more people there and we'd go 'Well, we must be doing something right' I think the gigs kept us going through our blackest times, and that if it wasn't for some of those gigs, we wouldn't be where we are now" - Jim Glennie, December 1999

Infuriating things, rock concerts. How many times do you go and come away feeling that you've been cheated, feeling that you've paid good money to see a bunch of overpaid, overrated has beens just running through the motions and playing hits that should really be long forgotten? How many times have you been crammed into a blackened, rusting tramshed with hundreds of other people only to witness an empty soulless spectacle, devoid of any of the magic and mystery and the exhiliration which you know these events are supposed to be about? How often have you stood in a crowd full of people staring emptily at a stage and asked "Why isn't anybody dancing?"

If the answer to any of the questions is "always", or even "far, far too often" then you have probably never seen James. On a good night, James are by far and away the best live band in the country. On a bad night, well ..., in the mind-boggling 18 years they've been treading the boards - "boys to men", as laughs founder member Jim Glennie - I haven't met anybody who has seen James on a bad night.

They were always a live band. In fact, for a number of years, James didn't release records at all and didn't plan to, preferring to concentrate on the unifying power of their live experience. When they did release records - their first, fledgling steps on Manchester independent Factory Records, or their badly-promoted albums for unsympathetic American-based major Sire - their gigs became a way of taking the music on those records to the people. You'll still find people now who'll talk about the Eighties James gigs when the band - then consisting of bassist Glennie, guitarist Larry Gott, drummer Gavan Whelan and the hypnotised, whirling marionette of a vocalist Tim Booth - would whip themselves and the audience into an almost trance-like state of abandon. They'd take on early songs like Johnny Yen and Really Hard and anything that the sun, the rain and the Gods could throw at them. When the band was really struggling - when they fell out with Sire, when they were subsequently without a label, overlooked by the press and utterly poverty-striken, living on potatoes - the gigs were James way of reminding themselves and their devoted audiences that they all mattered.

It got easier of course. In the Nineties, James expanded to a seven-piece with the departure of Whelan and added what are now key members - drummer David Baynton Power, violinist / guitarist Saul Davies and keyboard whizzkid Mark Hunter - for tremendously successful albums such as 1992's Seven and 1993's Laid. There were other departures - sometime trumpet player Andy Diagram, more catastrophically Larry Gott in 1995 - but somehow James have always emerged stronger. Crises? They positively thrive on them, whether they be painful departures, marriage breakups, business wrangles or a whole litany of personal ailments. But now? Well, things seem, laughs Jim "curiously stable". Following last year's enormously successful million selling Best Of - which Tim Booth describes as "a vindication", they've just released Millionaires, which for many is their strongest ever. After 18 years??! Other bands don't do that, do they? But, as you will be reminded again and again during tonight's concert, other bands are not like James.

There's certainly never been a better time to see them, because creatively and commercially the band are on a roll.

"I think the Best Of gave us a lot of renewed confidence," says Tim. "Obviously I had the belief that in a magical way people would get it, but yeah, I was slightly surprised by the enormity of the success. Now we want to go on from that. We're all ridiculously positive at the moment."

It hasn't always been like this, and - following a familiar pattern with the band - what may prove to be their biggest peak arose out of their lowest point ever. Not long back, James seemed - in the words of their own song - runaground. The problems go back as far as the Laid album. Perhaps naively believing press snipes that they were on the way out in this country, James decided to devote massive amounts of time to touring in America. This was a calamitous decision which could have finished the band, and certainly culminated in Larry Gott's departure, in 1995, for a quieter life as a carpenter. James regrouped (adding cellist / guitarist Adrian Oxaal) and turned to British triumph in 1997 with the gold-selling album Whiplash, but within the band all was not well. For a band that had always been close, personal resentments had arisen in America and suddenly exploded on the US Lollapalooza tour in 1997.

"We were burnt out even before we started playing Lollapalooza," sighs Tim now. "The previous tours had just about killed us. Months and months in the back of the bus, with fellow inmates! There's two hours relief every night onstage, which is wonderful, and then you've got the other 22 hours to deal with. Personally, relationships that had been close developed into festering boils that noone sought to lance."

The band insist they'll probably never go into the more personal details of what happened, but do reveal a chasm developed between Tim and some of the other, more rock n roll members of the band. "At Lollapalooza, there were two buses," admits Booth, quiet and painstaking. "I was on one with the crew. The amount of partying on the other was incredible. People had strong comedowns from that tour. It was a long, long party and it led to a long, long hangover."

While the band plunged into hedonism to cope with the extreme physical and mental pressures of touring America, the vocalist found his own ways of letting off steam. Then, as now, for hours before a gig he'd almost be screaming with pent-up adrenalin, which would generally erupt onstage. "I found myself taking it to extremes with extreme audiences. You know all these metal kids shouting 'faggot' at me. So I found all these glitzy tops and skirts and we all dressed up like 'faggots'. I'd walk up to people who were screaming abuse at us, singing in their faces, and suddenly they'd have 10,000 people looking at them on a huge screen being sung at by this crazy English guy."

A crazy English guy who, due to two slipped discs sustained during his trademark hyperactive dancing - Whiplash indeed - was wearing a neck brace.

Now Tim can laugh at the memory. But then.....

"I was so fragile. I had someone to look after me the whole time. I was trying vainly to sleep. The band were trying not to sleep! I was in a lot of pain, lonely, and I felt like everyone hated me, really. It was a very heavy time. We were falling apart."

But they didn't, and as has happened so often in James history, crisis resulted in triumph when 1998's Best Of sold a million copies, spending weeks at number one. From being at the jaws of disaster, James had tasted their sweetest ever triumph. Revitalised, the band sat down to do what they probably should have done months, if not years before, and talked, and talked, and talked.

"At the end of last year and early this year, we sat down and had a lot of serious meetings with each other and we just broke through." Their grievances resolved and the band feeling more positive about themselves than they had in years, James were ready to resurrect their magic once again.

Unlike most bands who have a very fixed structure, James has always had an almost revolving leadership. As Tim wrote in the sleevenotes to the Best Of, "whoever has the energy and drive leads the band until someone else is inspired and takes over." Where Whiplash was largely driven onwards by Dave and Jim, at the start of the year, the job fell to Saul Davies. The man once described by Youth as "the most incompetent session musician ever" would end the year as co-producer and latest captain of the ship (with Brian Eno) of the gold-selling massively acclaimed Millionaires. Many of the recordings for the album originated in Saul's bedroom in Scotland, where he would come up with chord structures after "a bottle or two of Chilean Red." Then, in the studio in Berkshire, Eno would spin his magic and the band would craft the basic skeletons into finished songs, together with new guitarist (and close friend of Saul) Michael Kulas. Saul admits he was "scared" of what Tim would think of the songs and how Booth would interpret the music lyrically.

The two have a curious relationship that is often played out - not without a little excitement  - onstage. Sometimes it seems like electricity is literally flying between them. They're like Mick Jagger and Keith Richards or even Ali and Joe Frazier, involved in epic duels where it seems like a lot of water has gone under the bridge between them, which may now have been finally reconciled.....

"I think that's probably true," admits Davies, a sharp painstaking talker whose considerable insight belies his image as the rock n roller in the band. "It's like soap operas... people watch soap operas because you can get your rocks off watching people at each other's throats. Some of that has gone on between me and Tim. Years ago, we lived in the same house for a few months, and he's an odd character! But he thinks I'm an odd character" But we've come to recognise each other's strengths. There's never been an obvious power struggle. Cos I couldn't take him on. I think he looks at me and thinks I've got a little bit of the Devil in me, and he's not sure where that's gonna lead to. There is a tussle between us onstage. But it's fuelled by aggression, even love." Over to you, Tim.

"I think Saul and I are actually very similar in a weird way," Booth insists. "We take different paths, but we start from a place of being pretty sensitive, vulnerable and neurotic and that comes out in the music, it's vulnerable but also dark. The Devil in Saul? I think the Devil's in all of us. I think in the past I've been seen as being judgmental of Saul... because I'm not taking drugs or doing the rock n roll thing people have thought I was being 'superior'. I can't judge how anyone else lives. I realise that at one point in your life, it can be very healthy to plunge into hedonism. Saul is enjoying being a great rock guitarist in a great band, at the end of the Nineties, and that's becoming an extinct species! Saul's doing it his way. I have a lot of time for Saul."

As for Tim's interpretations of the music, Davies has no complaints. "Tim did such an amazing job... He totally got the flavour of the music and made it a hundred times better. Because that's what he does.

Of the lyrical themes that dominate the album, Tim insists "I don't think I could be in a life without questioning what we're here for."

These are great times for James. They're huge, but still somehow outsiders, perhaps the hugest outsiders in pop. They've been through a lot, have always been more of a fans band than a critics band but have never lost their edge. Indeed, as David Baynton-Power reveals - they still treat every record as if it's their last, and never allow themselves the security of complacency.

Millionaires has already gone gold, spawning three hit singles in the rousing I Know What I'm Here For, eerily vengeful We're Going To Miss You and the sublime Just Like Fred Astaire, one of the band's best ever 45s. Recently, the classic Sit Down was voted Britain's eighth favourite lyric of the entire century. A mere 18 years in, James are basking in their most golden period, and already planning the next record. Relationships are good, and according to Booth, James "want to work with each other intensely for weeks at a time!"

But before that, there are these concerts. Expect hits. Expect plenty from Millionaires. But also expect unexpected treats and surprises. Oh, and magic. Plenty of magic.

"This is Christmas 1999," concludes Saul, triumphantly but thoughtfully. "Most people don't have a lot of money and they've made the decision to come to our gig. There's the t-shirt, the driving there and all the rest of it. They've made a big commitment to the band and the gig might be part of their Millenium experience. So we have a responsibility to those people, to send them out of the venue happy. But equally, I don't think we can play exactly what they expect us to play, because it's too predictable for everybody. There's a very fine line between us playing a lot of hits and then saying 'This is a song from a band that's been going 18 years and you might not know it. But if you didn't know it, you're gonna love it anyway!' That's the challenge, and if we challenge the audience in the right way, these gigs could be really special."

Aren't they always?